LR Editor’s Note:We are re-posting the below guest analysis by Robert Barsocchini, an internationally published researcher and writer who focuses on global force dynamics and writes professionally for the film industry. He is a regular contributor to Washington’s Blog. The below point-by-point examination of the DIA document was part of Levant Report’s early coverage and remains a relevant in-depth introduction to the contents of the declassified report (though more has since been revealed). Currently, the document is the basis for renewed discussion in the aftermath of tragic terror attacks in Paris, Beirut, and over Sinai. Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald highlighted the DIA report and former DIA Director Michael Flynn’s confirmation of its accuracy in an article for The Intercept, which is sure to spark renewed debate.

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For those readers only now discovering the DIA’s “salafist principality” document, here is some recommended introductory material: 1) Marcy Wheeler’s Salon.com article examined the legal basis through which the memo was declassified, establishing that it was used to brief Congress; 2) Former high ranking MI6 spy and Middle East expert Alastair Crooke analyzed the document from the perspective of a veteran intelligence official for The Huffington Post; 3) Tufts University Historian Hugh Roberts included lengthy discussion of the report in his historical narrative overview of the Syrian conflict for the London Review of Books; 4) Seamus Milne and Nafeez Ahmed wrote hugely popular articles that pushed the document into mainstream media in the UK and Germany (see here and here); 5) Levant Report questioned the Defense Intelligence Agency about the document here, and the State Department was questioned in its daily press briefing here and here. Note: Embedded tweets are not endorsements of the article, but provide broader context of events that have unfolded in Syria.

by Robert Barsocchini

Here, I wrote that these documents “may” say the US/West wanted/want a Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria, because the declassified docs 1) say “Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”; 2) in the next sentence, the doc defines the “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey” as the countries that “support the opposition”; 3) they later say the “opposition forces are trying to control the Eastern areas”, where Syria borders Iraq, and, specifically of this control of Eastern areas, say the “Western Countries, the Gulf States, and Turkey are supporting these efforts”. 4) In a section about “effects on Iraq” the docs say that “there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria…”, then say “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

However, while the document begins by stating that “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition”, the document, as noted, also defines other groups, which could be considered “powers”, as either components of or supporters of the opposition: Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI. The report states: “AQI supported the opposition from the beginning…”

While the FSA is defined as “opposition”, Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are initially described as “the major forces driving the insurgency”, not as “the opposition”. It could be that the document means that the FSA is “the opposition” and the West, its allies, and the Islamic groups are simply all supporting them, but with different individual goals. However, AQI is also directly described as “opposition” to Assad: “AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

Our counterterrorism strategy has been so feckless many folks around the world aren't sure if Americans are for or against the terrorists.

In the section that says “there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria…”, then that “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want”—this section of the doc defines the opposition forces controlling the Iraq/Syria border as “Syrian Free Army”, the FSA, and says the FSA will try to take “advantage of the sympathy of the Iraqi border population”.

It then says that “If the situation [likely meaning FSA control of the border] unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” (The US obviously opposes Iranian expansion and sides with the Sunnis, but the last part of this sentence, as it is framed in terms of Shia expansion, may suggest that here the “supporting powers to the opposition” may be referring not the sentence stating “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition”, but to earlier sentences stating “AQI supported the opposition from the beginning…” and “AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

So whilst the CIA was arming "moderate" Syrian rebels in 2012, the DIA reported a possible creation of an Islamic State to isolate Assad #pt

Thus, perhaps this is simply unclear writing, or too much is censored, and what this really means is that while both AQI and “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey” support the “opposition” (and AQI also comprises the opposition), only the AQI part of that support for the opposition would want a “Salafist Principality” to be established. This is clearly stated regarding the effect on Iraq. However, the US/West do strongly support existing Salafist Principalities, as noted above, including the most ideologically expansionist one, Saudi Arabia. Thus, supporting a Salafist Principality, and annexation of territory (Israel, Cuba, Diego Garcia, etc.), is something the US already does currently. (International relations scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed notes that a RAND corp report previously advised the US “to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”)

The doc says the above-noted “deterioration”, likely referring to the ‘unravels’ term above, “has dire consequences on the Iraq situation.” It continues that this “deterioration” would give more momentum to terrorist groups and could allow them to declare an “Islamic state”, “which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.” (A study out of British universities noted that US government/media did not report on ISIS publicly until it began to seize oil fields. Then, the study shows, the US sent drones to try to stop ISIS.)

The last uncensored sentence of the doc says that the third consequence of the “deterioration of the situation” (‘the situation’ likely meaning the FSA control of the border region) would be terrorist elements from all over the Arab world “entering into Iraqi arena.”

The rest of the document is censored, as are some sections before this.

Overall, what we can see in the document clearly states that a Salafist Principality is not desired by the West in terms of the Iraqi situation, but may or may not suggest that this principality is desired in terms of isolating Assad, which is a stated goal of the West and its allies (not just isolating, but removing). However, it is also a goal of AQI and its allies, which are defined both as supporting “the opposition” and having “declared its opposition of Assad’s government”. While this group and its affiliates could be viewed as a strategic asset for isolating Assad, they could also be viewed as a third party outside the wider global contest between West and East, which is opposed to either. However, a group in Syria opposed to both sides could be seen as preferable to having a group allied with the East and opposed to the West.

IS may attack Damascus next. If it attacks Iraqis or Kurds, U.S. will bomb it. If IS attacks Assad, gets free pass. Incentive clear.

International security scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed analyzes these documents and concludes the US practices a policy of “sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.”

“According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.”

“The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran.”

“The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”

Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said (noted by Ahmed) that the documents “raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

“Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West’s mainstream media, promoted Syria’s rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West’s support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it’s significant that the West’s media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them.”

Ahmed quotes a former US Marine: “US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.”

Former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford responds to the question of whether he knowingly supported AQ and ISIS: https://t.co/8TjNZajpls

Ahmed concludes: “The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West’s commitment to “isolating Syria.”

What the docs establish beyond doubt is that, in 2012, when they were written, the US saw the likelihood of a “Salafist Principality” or “Islamic State” being established, and was fully aware the insurgency in Syria was mainly driven by Islamic groups, who were fighting Assad and also supporting the FSA, which itself has been shown to have Islamic tendencies. For example, an FSA commander is on video saying he would want to implement Sharia law. But the West and its allies continued their support, as FSA members openly shared their US supplies with the ISIS-related groups, and even converted to ISIS.

As Ahmed puts it, “the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.”

“As Shoebridge told me, ‘The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion’ — namely, the emergence of ISIS — ’but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”

The same week we learn for sure the Syrian rebels have been terrorist-infested since 2012 if not earlier the US reportedly offers air cover.

Ahmed quotes a former MI5 officer explaining that after Libya and other such projects by the West, we see in this behavior towards Syria “part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing.”

What we already knew before these docs is that the US and West strongly support extremist Salafist states as part of their strategy of eating away at the parts of the world not under the US thumb, the “East”: Syria, Iran, Russia, and China. The US and West themselves are built on and continue to support and commit theft and annexation of territory, and support, commit, or ignore (if they are not politically helpful) all kinds of mass killings, including by groups worse than ISIS; these have included the Khmer Rouge, the Suharto Regime, and the US itself: the establishment of the USA and the building of it into a superpower was a process that involved crimes worse than anything ISIS will ever accomplish.

Further, ISIS, as pointed out by Kofi Annan and many others, arose as a consequence of the illegal US invasion of Iraq, motivated largely by Bush Jr.’s religious fanaticism, an invasion the international community tried and failed to prevent, which, the most recent and comprehensive report finds, has killed about 1 to 2 million or more people, another feat ISIS will never accomplish.

While studies and many official statements make clear, and it is obvious to any minimally non-US-brainwashed individual, that the invasion was largely about oil, even if we disregard that, ignore the rest of US history, and declare the US had/has “good intentions” regarding Iraq, that puts us at the level of of Japanese fascists, who believed in their “good intentions” regarding their invasions of China and elsewhere.

People with too much power always declare good intentions, and are often sincere, as they get god-complexes and view themselves as humanity’s benevolent saviors. But the reason war (including supporting warring proxies) is outlawed as an instrument of policy is that it has disastrous consequences, as we are seeing, even for the sincerely well-intentioned.

Additional Notes:

It should be stressed that clearly admitting the West would “want” a Salafist principality in Eastern Syria is not generally the kind of statement people in governments would make of themselves, even in private, hence makes it less likely here that the West is being referred to specifically by that statement, as does the inclusion of the phrase “if the situation unravels” (meaning FSA control of the East) an Islamic state could result. However, it is noteworthy that the West and the Islamists are so easily conflated in this document (this conflation may well be intentional as a way of discussing benefits without clearly stating that they might be desired), as they are clearly delineated as both being opposed to the Assad government, and for similar reasons – opposing Iran and the Shia, backed by Russia and China, the latter part being of greater import to the West. The doc also makes very clear that the FSA was/is being supported by AQI and its Islamist affiliates, and that those Islamists were known to be “the major forces driving the insurgency”. It has long been known that FSA shares its US/Western/Gulf/Turkish supplies with and converts to Islamist groups, and AQI, the ISIS precursor, has always been known as particularly aggressive. And as Dr. Ahmed points out, the document nowhere suggests ending aid to the opposition due to its being driven by AQI and affiliates, and only frames the potential creation of the “Islamic state” as a bad thing in relation to Iraq. In relation to Syria/Assad, it is not framed as a bad thing, but as something that would be seen to “isolate” Assad, a goal shared by the West and the Islamist groups. So, these documents may well be an example of discussing a strategy while attempting to maintain some degree of “plausible deniability”.

It must also be remembered that the US and West not only support extremist Salafi/Wahhabi/Sharia established states, but have on numerous occasions worked with, backed, aided and/or paralleled some of the goals of non-state groups such as the Mujahedin and al Qaeda (in Afghanistan – see Brzezinski, Bob Gates; Bosnia, Kosovo – on these see Fulton in scholarly journal Global Security Studies), including under Obama in relation to Libya. In US support for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan and then the Taliban, the support was not even seen as a means to an end, but a completely acceptable end in itself: the US was fine with the Taliban taking power and staying in power, as long as it cooperated with the US. That is the bottom line. As soon as it proved uncooperative, the US “discovered” the Taliban human rights violations that non-governmental US monitors had been decrying for years, while the US was supporting the Taliban (here). And, as noted, abhorrent behavior is not a deterrent to US support. The US has committed far worse crimes than ISIS and supported groups far worse than ISIS. Only those unfamiliar with history and glued to US TV can think ISIS is some new level of evil in the world, or at least one not seen for a long time. The only qualifier for US support is whether the group in question is willing to cater to US business and strategic interests.

“I don’t want the U.S. government to provide weapons to Al-Qaeda…it’s a very simple concept in my mind.”

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is a rare voice of sanity in the public arena. Her perspective on U.S. policy in Syria is not one you’ll often find on CNN but is one I encounter frequently among veterans and even the few intelligence analysts that I know. She boldly states that in the attempt to overthrow the Assad government of Syria, the U.S. and CIA armed and supported our enemies.

She is an Iraq war veteran and is fully aware that Al-Qaeda in Iraq, at the point it crossed into Syria and joined the fight against Assad, was used of the CIA and State Department to wage proxy war as a U.S. strategic asset against the Syrian Arab Republic.

ISIS would not be the massive terror army it is today without such U.S. covert support to the rebels in Syria.

The video is accompanied by an article I wrote which originally appeared in Foreign Policy Journal and was featured on AntiWar.com. I offer it as a tribute to my fellow veterans as well as active service members struggling to come to grips with the facts of our nation’s criminal actions in Syria…

“Iraq, ISIS, and The Myth of Sisyphus”

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”

–Albert Camus, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

As the world reacts to President Obama’s announcement of a multi-front air and ground proxy war—on the one hand, bombing ISIS inside Iraq and Syria, and on the other, ramping up arms and training for the vaguely defined Syrian “opposition”—we as a nation should reflect upon the Myth of Sisyphus.

Let’s Roll…

I joined the Marine Corps as an idealistic eighteen-year-old in 2000, with a firm resolve, as I enthusiastically told my recruiter shortly before leaving for boot camp, to “fight evil in the world”—a resolve rooted more deeply in my veins after the 9/11 attacks. Slogans such as “let’s roll!” echoed in my ears, and my fervor for “the mission” influenced others to follow my path of military service. While stationed in Quantico providing post-9/11 “first responder” security to headquarters assets in the area, I became close friends with a young local college student, also just out of high school, and I encouraged him to join up.

My friend embarked on multiple tours of duty within a short two years as a Marine infantryman, and was killed by an IED in Iraq on his third tour prior to his twenty-first birthday. He understood little about the place of his eventual death, as had been clear during our brief visits together as we reconnected between his deployments. We were never encouraged to learn about the history of Iraq or the Arab world, or to ask too many questions for that matter. “Let’s roll” was enough for us as we set out to “win hearts and minds.”

Uncovering Absurd Contradictions

As the power of such simple platitudes faded, I began to investigate for myself the history of U.S. involvement in the region: this search began in the library of Marine Corps University at MCB Quantico and led to my traveling to Syria upon completion of active service.

Few Americans know of the absurd contradictions of our foreign policy in Iraq and other places over the past few decades, yet I found that many Iraqis and Syrians knew the history well. The United States, through covert support of the Iraqi Ba’ath in the 1960’s and 1970’s, sponsored Saddam’s rise to power as a way to combat perceived communist influence and populist national movements in the Middle East. Throughout that time, the CIA-supported Ba’ath engaged in “cleansing campaigns” which involved door-to-door death squads offing Washington’s enemies based on questionable lists provided through covert liaisons.

Upon Saddam’s rising to the presidency in 1979, and while the Iranian Revolution drove forward just across the border, the United States encouraged Saddam to invade Iran, kick-starting the most devastating war in the region’s history. Most Americans still haven’t seen the easily accessible archive footage of Reagan’s then special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983, in what was clearly a warm and cordial visit.

Saddam would go on, during the course of a war that took over a million lives (1980-1988), to frequently employ chemical nerve agents against Iranian troop movements; later into the war this occurred with the assistance of the CIA and DIA. By the time of the 1988 gas attack against the Kurds of Halabja, U.S. covert assistance to Iraq’s military was established and routine.

And yet, Saddam soon became the new super-villain of the 1990’s and 2000’s, the very image of evil incarnate in the world—though his dictatorial and brutal rule had undergone no change from when he was the CIA’s man in Baghdad—only American perceptions of him did. The United States had helped to create the monster that in 2003 it was telling young men and women to travel across the world to destroy. Ironically, one of the main moral justifications for going after “the evil tyrant” was his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja.

Uncovering such an absurd contradiction of recent history made me feel like Sisyphus in Albert Camus’ famous essay. Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to his fate of pushing his boulder up the hill, must ever repeat the same process after it inevitably rolls back down the hill; he eventually becomes conscious of the futility of his action. We can imagine such tragic Sisyphean moments of realization in the minds of hundreds of thousands of veterans as they watched ISIS tear through places like Fallujah and Northern Iraq over the course of this past half year.

The Rock is Still Rolling

And yet, ISIS too, is a monster the United States helped to create.

Instead of two decades for the contradictions to come full circle, as was the case with the creation and destruction of Saddam Hussein, ISIS has gone from friend to monster within only two years. The U.S. armed forces, told by the White House of a minimal three-year long campaign to destroy ISIS, have barely recovered from the now seemingly futile burden of wars in post-Saddam Iraq and forgotten, ongoing Afghanistan.

As if the absurdity of the task of a renewed Iraq campaign mandated by the “gods” in Washington weren’t enough, we will now bomb ISIS locations in Syria while increasing the training and equipping of Syrian rebels. If there are military members and veterans out there, still not conscious that “there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor,” then I suggest watching the above video. The video gives insight into the Sisyphean task ahead of us as a nation: a never-ending cycle, old-yet-new, already set up for futility and failure.

Amazingly, the video, titled, “US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al Nusra,” has not yet had widespread distribution, even though it has been authenticated by the top Syria expert in the U.S., Joshua Landis, of the University of Oklahoma, and author of the hugely influential Syria Comment. Using his Twitter account, Dr. Landis commented (8/27): “in 2013 WINEP advocated sending all US military aid thru him [Col. Okaidi]. Underscores US problem w moderates.”

The video, documenting (now former) U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to FSA Col. Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi in Northern Syria, also shows the same Col. Okaidi celebrating with and praising a well-known ISIS commander, Emir Abu Jandal, after conducting a joint operation. In an interview, the U.S. “key man” at that time (2013), through which U.S. assistance flowed, also praises ISIS and Al-Qaeda as the FSA’s “brothers.” The video further shows Okaidi proudly declaring that al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda in Syria) makes up ten percent of the FSA.

I can think of no greater absurd foreign policy path to follow than to continue arming one wing of Syria’s rebels (only until very recently directly allied with the new “enemy”), while at the same time bombing another, and all the while declaring the necessity of continued “war on terror.”

Dan Sanchez, theAntiMedia.org — A quartet of peace negotiators has won the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in preserving the Tunisian Revolution. That 2011 event kicked off the wave of uprisings known as the Arab Spring. The Tunisian Revolution is widely seen as the one bright spot of the Arab Spring, which has otherwise brought war, tyranny, and chaos to every country it has touched.

But that should not be considered a mark against popular sovereignty itself. It was outside interference from the U.S. empire that poisoned the Arab Spring and turned it into a catastrophe.

Tunisia was the one Arab Spring country to escape this fate simply because it went first. Caught by surprise, Washington was not able to ruin things until the revolution had already run its course.

In every other country, the United States heavily intervened in one of two ways.

When the Arab Spring threatened or overthrew U.S.-backed dictators or royal despots, Washington sponsored counter-revolutions.

On the other hand, when the Arab Spring reached independent “rogue” regimes, the U.S. and its allies co-opted the uprisings. They radicalized the opposition by pouring money, training, and weapons into it and sponsoring radical jihadists who came to dominate the insurgency.

Egypt’s Arab Spring developed too early and quickly for the U.S. to be able to save then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “family friend ” General Hosni Mubarak from losing power. And so an election was held which was won by a mildly Islamist administration under Mohamed Morsi.

But this was short-lived, as a counter-revolution sanctioned by the United States and bankrolled by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia then overthrew the elected government, installing a new military dictator.

The restored dictatorship is now back to business as usual: brutal repression and human rights violations, helping Israel keep the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip trapped and miserable, and receiving $1.5 billion a year in U.S. foreign aid.

By the time the Arab Spring reached Yemen, the United States was ready enough to engineer an election in which there was only one candidate on the ballot. And so one sock puppet dictator—Ali Abdullah Saleh—was merely replaced by another: Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Secretary Clinton praised the rigged election and inauguration as “promising steps on the path toward a new, democratic chapter in Yemen’s history.”

And after this replacement dictator of Yemen was overthrown by the local “Houthirebel” movement, the U.S. backed a savage war by Saudi Arabia on that impoverished country that still rages today.

Adding to the vast collateral damage wrought by America’s drone war on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Saudis have been bombing the Houthis, who are AQAP’s chief enemies, resulting in ever greater conquests for the terrorist group.

“Back in 2011, for instance, just days after Bahraini security forces fired live ammunition at protesters in Manama—an attack that killed four and wounded many others—President Barack Obama praised King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s commitment to reform. Neither did the White House object when it was notified in advance that 1,200 troops from Saudi Arabia would enter Bahrain to clear the protests in March of 2011.”

But when the Arab Spring reached Libya, under the relatively independent Arab nationalist dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, the United States took the side of the insurgents, arming jihadists and waging an air war that overthrew the government. This has sent the country spiraling into chaos.

And when the Arab Spring reached Syria, under the Baathist regime of Bashar al-Assad, the United States again took the side of the insurgents and again sponsored jihadists, along with regional allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf monarchies.

As a released U.S. intelligence report revealed, Washington did so fully realizing that the insurgency was dominated by Islamic extremists and that supporting it would likely result in the rise of a “Salafist principality.” As it turned out, this Salafist principality was ISIS. And it is rivaled for leadership of the insurgency only by Syrian Al Qaeda. Both have ended up with a large amount of American weapons.

The American-fed Arab Spring war in Syria has claimed the lives of a quarter of a million and has displaced millions.

Tunisia has been a success — although not an unqualified or a necessarily permanent one — because it had the one Arab Spring that Washington did not get its bloody mitts on. The Nobel Peace Prize granted in its honor should also be seen as an indictment of the empire that stood in the way of millions of other Arabs from achieving the same success — and that turned their dreams of freedom into nightmares of tyranny and war.

Photo: Libya; from “liberation” by NATO to “terror wonderland” to refugee crisis.

Steven Chovanec is an independent geopolitical analyst and writer based in Chicago, IL. He is a student of International Studies and Sociology at Roosevelt University and conducts independent, open-source research into geopolitics and social issues. His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com, find him on Twitter @stevechovanec.

by Steven Chovanec

As the gravest refugee crisis since WWII continues unabated, everyday new reports give us privileged enough not to be personally effected mere glimpses at the outright horror that is being visited upon our brothers and sisters across the world on a daily basis.

A horror that has sparked the public to advocate that “no person is illegal” in response to their governments’ shameful positions which seek to keep refugees out at all costs while avoiding the main root causes of the problem and their own complicity.(1)

Reading the Western media, heavy emphasis is put upon the criminal enterprises that are boating these refugees across the seas, editorializing the situation to justify a heavy-handed response in order to ‘prosecute the criminals.’ However, despite the moral bankruptcy of seeking to profit from such a crisis, these enterprises would have no demand had not so much death and destruction been inflicted upon refugee homelands. Moreover one could glean that refugees are less upset over the fees of those providing them an opportunity to escape than they are with Western governments who refuse them, and whom also foment instability in their countries.

Western leaders and media pundits alike are straining to blame the crisis on official enemies and Western inaction. David Cameron blames Assad in Syria along with “the butchers of ISIS and the criminal gangs that are running this terrible trade in people,” yet, as Daniel McAdams points out, “proponents of the four-year US policy of Syria destabilization and regime change are lining up to make their case that the current refugee crisis… is one hundred percent the fault of both Syrian president Assad and western non-interventionists who objected to plans in 2013 for the US and UK to begin bombing Syria.”

Other Western publications do in fact have the gall to actually criticize their own leaders’ guilt in the matter. The reasons? The West has failed because it has simply not done enough, sat lazily on the sidelines, and thus further intervention is needed.

Once again the only criticisms allowed in the ‘liberal’ western press are ones which presuppose benevolent intentions.

The sad truth however is that the alarming refugee situation was a predictable outcome of the West’s crazed militant adventurism, and the calls for the West to ‘do more’ are in actuality calls to exacerbate the crisis by increasing that which caused it, thinly veiling themselves as dissident criticisms.

The UNHCR calculates that some 366,402 Europe-bound refugees have reached Europe by sea this year alone, the majority of which (51%) are Syrians, while the next largest portions are from Afghanistan (14%), Eritrea (8%), Nigeria (4%), and Iraq (3%).(2)

A total of 12 million Syrians have been displaced, 7.6 internally and 4 million abroad. In Iraq more than 3 million have been displaced since December 2013. Poverty and destruction in Libya have also caused hundreds of thousands to flee from Africa. 137,000 refugees migrated this year while 1,800 never completed the journey and died at sea. 1.3 million are displaced inside Ukraine, nearly all of them from the southeastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv. 867,000 have left the country, most going to Russia.(3)

Almost invariably, the major regions afflicted by this crisis are also areas of either direct or indirect US military aggression and intervention.

The invasion of Afghanistan was initially justified through the declared motive of compelling the Taliban to hand over people the US accused of having been involved in the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban agreed, requesting that first evidence be provided. The Bush administration refused to provide any. The reason? They didn’t have any.

The FBI and Justice Department have never formally charged bin Laden with involvement in 9/11. Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI, said that the reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama’s Most Wanted page and why the DoJ never formally indicted and charged him for the offense is because “the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”(4)

The Taliban eventually agreed to hand over bin Laden for trail in a country other than the US without asking for evidence in return for a halt in the US bombing. The White House refused this offer as well, and 3 weeks into the war announced that the bombing would continue until the people of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban, a textbook example of international terrorism according to the US’ own definition, and this would later became the official justification for the war.

The head of the FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, told the press that the FBI believed that the plot might have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was most likely implemented and carried out in the UAE and Germany.(5)

The Afghan invasion thus had nothing to do with finding and bringing the criminals to justice, which could have been accomplished through careful investigative and police work, but instead, as was eventually admitted officially, was about regime change and thus control over Afghanistan, wrecking the country through war and destruction while sending countless fleeing for their lives.

As well, if the US’ declared ‘mission’ of going after any state that harbored terrorists were actually implemented, it follows that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have been invaded as well.

According to an extensive investigation by Britain’s leading international security scholar Nafeez Ahmed, in which declassified documents, official government reports, and intelligence official’s testimony are cited, specific intelligence was available to the US that bin Laden was living in Pakistan under the protection of US allies for years before the alleged 2011 assassination raid. The US was stymied from acting due to its longstanding relations with Saudi and Pakistani intelligence.(6)

Instead the response to 9/11 did not target these 2 US allies without whom the plot never could have succeeded, but instead was aimed at countries the US sought to colonize, Iraq having no ties whatsoever to al-Qaeda and being one of the main state-deterrents to jihadi radicalism.(7)

The true intentions behind the Iraq invasion, as all official pretexts collapse instantly upon examination, were evidenced in a “Declaration of Principles” document signed by Bush and then Prime Minister Maliki in 2007. The agreement allowed for a long-term US military presence in the country, if the enormous Green Zone “embassy” wasn’t enough of an indication for the permanence of the US presence, while as well explicitly stating that Iraq’s economy (meaning its oil resources) would be open to the preferential access of US capital. One would be hard-pressed to find a more blatant pronouncement of economic imperialism.

These reasons were further underscored a year later when President Bush issued a signing statement declaring that any congressional legislation which barred military spending from being used to establish permanent US military installations in Iraq or from allowing the US to exercise control over its oil resources would be rejected.(8)

The jihadism now plaguing Iraq was a direct result of this decision to use the military to hit the country with a sledgehammer.

Former CIA officer Graham Fuller explains that although the US did not plan the formation of ISIS, it was the destructive US interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq which were the basic causes of its creation.(9)

Tactics used by the occupiers exacerbated the violence and sectarianism, pitting peaceful resistance movements in violent conflict with radical jihadists, fostering intra-insurgent violence despite civilians being caught within the crossfire, and supporting both Sunni, al-Qaeda linked factions as well as government-run “Salvadorian option” Shia death-squads, all part of a ‘divide and rule’ strategy that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires. All of this transformed a society in which Shia and Sunni coexisted much like Protestant and Catholics do in the West into a raging sectarian bloodbath, now one of the most dangerous places in the world to live, forcing countless people to flee their homes.(10)

After Iraq came Libya.

Before 2011 Libya was a main transport hub for the Trans-Saharan migration routes that extended into southern Europe. According to 2006 estimates, between 65,000 and 120,000 entered the Maghreb region yearly, of which 70 to 80% are believed to migrate through Libya. As well, Libya was a final destination for many and housed those which failed to reach Europe, taking in around 1 to 1.5 million while helping to mitigate European immigration concerns. Going one step further, Gaddafi also made deals with European states to forcibly shut down the Libyan coast in exchange for large sums of money, dropping illegal immigration through Libya down by 75% in 2009.(11)

All of this changed in 2011.

Gaddafi expressed willingness to abdicate shortly after the beginning of the 2011 revolt, but the US ignored his calls for a truce and continued with their regime-change policy, according to an extensive study compiled by the Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top level military officers, CIA officers, and academic think-tankers.

The report details how this policy included the arming of terrorists to overthrow the Libyan state, “the U.S. was fully aware of and facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qa’eda dominated rebel militias throughout the 2011 rebellion. The jihadist agenda of AQIM, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), and other Islamic terror groups represented among the rebel forces was well known to U.S. officials responsible for Libya policy. The rebels made no secret of their al-Qa’eda affiliation, openly flying and speaking in front of the black flag of Islamic jihad, according to author John Rosenthal and multiple media reports. And yet, the White House and senior Congressional members deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple a ruler who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qa’eda.”(12)

According to a 2007 report by the West Point Combating Terrorism Center, the city of Benghazi was one of al-Qaeda’s main headquarters. Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011 under the pretext that it was an al-Qaeda hotbed, however NATO warplanes prevented him from doing so, protecting the city and the al-Qaeda factions stationed there that the US had allied with. Afterwards, the black flag of al-Qaeda was hoisted off government buildings in Benghazi.(13)

Following Gaddafi’s fall Libya transcended into what Senator Rand Paul calls “a jihadist wonderland.” The Obama administration also then, with the support of British intelligence and in collusion with allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, created a ‘rat line’ into Syria.

Authorized in 2012, it was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya through southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh notes that “Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.”(14)

Obama then continued along the Libyan model by once again supporting al-Qaeda, this time to overthrow the Syrian president.

At least as far back as 2005 the US has been financing and training anti-government opposition groups in Syria with a view toward regime-change.(15)

Come 2011 United States Air Force (USAF) officers at the Lieutenant Colonel level would confirm in leaked WikiLeaks email exchanges that US Special Operations Forces were “already on the ground” in Syria prior to December of that year, whose mission it was to “commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces” and “elicit collapse from within.”(16)

A secret US-NATO base was established in Turkey in order to organize and expand the dissident base in the country, smuggle in weapons, conduct psychological operations and information warfare, and to funnel intelligence and military operators across the border.(17)

US-led operation rooms were set up in Turkey and Qatar where the CIA and MI6, along with Jordanian, Saudi, Turkish, and Qatari intelligence commanded and coordinated support to the rebel opposition to the tune of 1 billion dollars per year from the CIA alone. The US oversaw the operation, providing intelligence and deciding on which rebels would receive the weapons shipments, which were mainly supplied by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. According to classified assessments from US intelligence, most of these shipments were going to “hard-line Islamists.”(18)

Training camps were also set up in Qatar and Jordan.

According to high-level Jordanian officials, rebels trained at the base in Jordan would later go on to join ISIS.(19) Despite this, the training continued.

At the base in Qatar, rebel commanders describe how they were trained specifically to break the Geneva Conventions and “finish off” wounded and surrendered soldiers after an ambush.(20)

Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi would note that “CIA analysts are skeptical regarding the march to war. The frequently cited United Nations report that more than 3,500 civilians have been killed by Assad’s soldiers is based largely on rebel sources and is uncorroborated. The [Central Intelligence] Agency has refused to sign off on the claims. Likewise, accounts of mass defections from the Syrian Army and pitched battles between deserters and loyal soldiers appear to be a fabrication, with few defections being confirmed independently. Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels who are armed, trained, and financed by foreign governments are more true than false.”(21)

And while US allies openly supported al-Qaeda and ISIS under US supervision, the US armed supposedly “moderate” factions who were working alongside the terrorists, committing the same kinds of atrocities while funneling US-supplied weapons to them.(22)

US intelligence as well foresaw the rise of an “Islamic State” given all of this support for an extremist dominated opposition, yet saw the development as strategically beneficial and therefore increased its level of assistant in the following years.(23)

All of this culminating in a sectarian opposition dominated by al-Qaeda and ISIS.(24)

Currently Turkey and Saudi Arabia are openly supporting al-Qaeda and various other jihadi entities, while Qatar maintains good relations with al-Nusra and Turkey as well supports the Islamic State. Saudi Arabia too shows no convincing evidence that it has stopped supporting ISIS, while the CIA still supports up to 10,000 rebels under a program which has mainly gone to aid “hard-line Islamists.” In addition, the US has been instrumental in facilitating Pentagon-supported rebels to fight alongside jihadi extremists.(25)

The anti-ISIS coalition, made up of the main states which were instrumental in supporting ISIS’ rise, has predictably been a complete failure. Turkey, although officially taking part in the coalition, continues to support ISIS, while the jihadi group has only increased in strength as a result of the illegal US bombings which have massacred hundreds of civilians.(26)

Like Libya, where US intervention created chaos and proliferated extremism, Syria is now a magnet for aspiring terrorists, a land overrun by violent extremists and foreign-manufactured war and therefore contributes the most significant number of refugees out of any country to a global displacement crisis the likes of which has never been seen since the Second World War.

Yet it doesn’t end with Syria. As NATO and its ally’s attack the Syrian state by proxy, Russia has drawn a red-line and bolstered its Middle Eastern ally, effectively preventing a repeat of what occurred in Libya.

Partly the culmination of inertia from decades of regime-change efforts and EU/NATO expansion, and partly utilized as a way to punish Russia for defying the US policy in Syria, the violent seizure of power in Ukraine was the result of an externalization by foreign powers of internal Ukrainian political divisions.

Ukraine is divided between east and west by two contrasting visions of Ukrainian statehood. The western regions predominantly adhere to what Professor Richard Sakwa titles a “monist nationalist” vision, a form of nationalism which prioritizes the need to create an officially monolingual, unitary, and culturally specific “Ukrainian” state distinct from its neighbors, mainly Russia. This model seeks to restore an idealized vision of statehood, not to reflect the existing, pluralistic realities of the current Ukrainian society, and seeks greater relations with the EU and the West. At the extreme ends of this model are the militant ultra-nationalist neo-Nazi groups. The contrasting vision of statehood predominantly held by those in the south and east is that pluralism, which appeals to the principle of national inclusivity for all of the country’s disparate peoples, while still upholding a shared Ukrainian identity. This model thus opposes the nationalizing strain of the monists and favors strong and cooperative relations with Russia.(27)

The West’s decision to use the EU Association Agreement as a means to leverage Ukraine out of Russia’s and into its own orbit of influence, giving Yanukovych an ultimatum while ruling out calls by him and Russia for a negotiated settlement(28), saw the West ally itself with one half of the country against the other along a zero-sum, us-or-them mentality, exacerbating the internal tensions and eventually culminating in a violent seizure of power.

The US and EU provided financial, material, and political support to the opposition, whose militancy, propagandistically protected and enabled by the US, was led by far-right ultranationalist extremist the EU itself had denounced just years prior.(29)

The violent takeover of the state was endorsed by the US, although it was unconstitutional, broke an EU-brokered settlement agreed upon the day before, and saw unpopular ultra-nationalist leaders gain influential posts within the new government.(30)

A client administration was installed which immediately set out to silence any opposition to its rule. Given that the parties and politicians most supported in the east were driven out and purged as a result of the coup, the US-supported Kiev regime represented only the western regions and sought to instill its rule over a counter-coup revolt in the east that was rising up against it.(31)

Despite mirroring the exact same tactics used by the Maidan months before, Kiev and the West rejected the legitimacy of the eastern uprising and blamed it all solely on Russia, completely voiding out the humanity and legitimate grievances of the eastern Ukrainians, reducing them to nothing more than ‘terrorists’ and ‘Russian agents’ despite their shared desire for a unified Ukraine, albeit a differently envisioned unified Ukraine.(32)
Given a choice of negotiating with the differing views of the east or forcibly consolidating its rule by violently suppressing the dissent, Kiev launched a military campaign against its own citizens and their Russian backers at the behest of the United States.(33)

On its first launch, Kiev’s military was met by unarmed Ukrainian citizens. Mothers, grandmothers, and local inhabitants halted the tanks and soldiers, asking who they had come to fight, their own families and citizens?(34)

The convoy was forced to retreat, yet days after at again the behest of the US, the war machine was once again launched(35), this time succeeding in devastating and massacring the civilian populations in the east.

As the conflict has raged on, the unspoken of fact is that the Ukrainian military is targeting residential towns, villages, and buildings, causing countless civilian deaths while decimating the local infrastructure.(36)

It was because of this fateful decision of choosing to externalize all the blame on Russia for Ukraine’s internal political divisions while also launching a military operation to suppress the dissent against Kiev’s own violent seizure of power that so many families are being forced to flee from their homes.

Under the backdrop of Kiev shelling its own citizen population in the east was the Ukrainian addition to the refugee crisis born…

Much more can be said about all of this, and about many more interventions the US has embarked upon, yet the incontrovertible takeaway is the massive humanitarian toll and suffering that has been the result of all of this adventurism.

Many though are lining up to blame the West’s enemies for the humanitarian scourge of displacement that is occurring, however the common denominator in all these areas are not the presence of US enemies but of US aggression and meddling.

The same leaders and supporters of Western aggression who are attempting to use this crisis as a means to further their ignorant and militant narratives are most to blame for creating it with their prior displays of imperial aggression along the same narratives.

Any who profess concern over this inhumanity without calling for an end to the destructive interventions which are its causes are therefore only adding to the horrors they claim to seek to stop.

The imperial, exceptionalist mindset of the West which claims ownership for itself over the entirety of the world no matter how much death and destruction it causes is the true humanitarian catastrophe we now face in our times, of which this refugee crisis is unfortunately just one, inevitable symptom.

For another perspective, Afraa Dagher, an architect and political activist living in Syria, lends an insightful look at this crisis from the eyes of someone living in the country most affected by it:

“Hundreds of thousands of refugees are continuing to flee from countries of conflict, in the Middle East and Africa.

The sad point is that many of those refugees are Syrians. Syria, the country which used to welcome refugees from the war zone countries, such as Palestine, Armenia, Somalia, Iraq and Libya. Syria, the country which was one of the safer countries in the world just years ago before this global plot and global proxy war on Syria.

Syrians cross in illegal ways from Syria to Turkey, then to Greece, Macedonia and Europe.

Most of them drown in the sea because of no safer automotive is affordable to transfer them, though they pay huge amounts of money to warmonger merchants who manage to provide the transfer facilities to them.

Those merchants most of them based in Turkey, also most of those refugees are fleeing from their camps in Turkey to Europe, the question is why do they leave Turkey now?

On the other side the west handles this crisis in a bad way, forces on the border, more borders controlled, more fences. So there is no real solution, the west is really far from a solution.

At the same time the west blames Syria all the time for Palestinian refugees, accuses Syria of besiege them, which is not true at all, Palestinians in Syria have same Syrians rights, however they are also under terrorists attack as well as Syrians.

While Germany eases the rules of migration for those refugees and welcomes migrants, sets up camps, and calls for a conference to find a solution to deal better with those refugees.

Camps like these in Turkey and Jordan are not a solution, maybe Saudi and Qatar the two countries who funded the war against Syrians will send money to Europe as a help for those refugees expenses!, however these Arab gulfs countries didn’t welcome them, and didn’t help them in Jordan camps.

Did Mrs. Merkel think of lifting sanctions on Syrian people, or to stop supporting the so-called moderate rebels?

Or the west see it is better to use this crisis against the Syrians’ homeland, to help Syrians to live in peace, as they used to do before the west intervention in Syria, is a better solution if the west was really interested in helping them. Destroying Syrians’ homeland and giving them the name: refugee, is another catastrophe for Arabs, it is enough to have one catastrophe, the Palestinian one.

Actually the reason behind this crisis which is considered the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two, is the western policy towards the Middle East, the interventions in these countries, bombing countries like Libya by NATO, nurturing the radical terrorist opposition organizations like in Syria under the name of freedom seekers, creating the chaos as in Iraq.

Also destroying the economy in these countries as in Syria, when Europe and USA imposed sanction on Syrians, which increased the poverty, simultaneously when bombing the infrastructures of Syria by the so-called moderate rebels, who are backed by the west.

Some wrote the refugee crisis is promoted by civil war!while it is promoted by the west’s intervention in these countries, it is a global crisis and a global responsibility.

There is some agenda of evacuating the original people of countries like Syria, by committed massacres against them by the terrorist organizations, and to escalate the war in their countries, so they leave their countries which turned into war zone countries, and they seek human asylum.

And it will not be weird if the west used this card against our governments, to bomb Syria is a dream of some west leaders, they always want to do it under any pretext, regardless if many refugees are from Africa and countries like Libya, regardless of the Palestinian refugees since 1948, regardless of what is going on now against Yemeni people.”

Rick Lyman, “Treatment of Migrants Evokes Memories of Europe’s Darkest Hour.” The New York Times, 4 September 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/world/treatment-of-migrants-evokes-memories-of-europes-darkest-hour.html?partner=rss&emc=rss; Only 0.25 million of Syria’s total 20 million refugees (less than 2% of the total) have made it to Europe. Syrian refugees are not allowed to apply for asylum in embassies of EU countries in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan where they mostly are accumulated, so they must travel illegally to EU countries in order to exercise their right of applying for asylum. The discussed EU quota plan to allow application before entering the EU only includes 20,000, or 0.2% of the Syrian refugees. So the EU essentially does everything it can to stop more than 99% of the Syrian refugees from applying for the asylum they are legally entitled to. “Where Are the Syrian Refugees?” Gapminder Foundation, 9 June 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_QrIapiNOw; However, Germany’s “open door” policy is helping as 8,000 refugees recently entered the country. Yet still, in 2014 only around 45% of asylum applications made to European governments were accepted, at least half were turned away. Katrin Bennhold, et al., “Germans Welcome Migrants After Long Journey Through Hungary and Austria.” The New York Times, 5 September 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/world/europe/migrant-crisis-austria-hungary-germany.html?partner=rss&emc=rss.

“The first moves from Washington made it clear that the anti-terror war would be waged without any confrontation with Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, two close US allies, despite the fact that without the involvement of these two countries 9/11 was unlikely to have happened.” “The ‘war on terror’ has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement.” Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (New York and London: Verso, 2015), pp. 4, 58.

The ‘Declaration of Principles’ document stipulated extensive US military influence (i.e. control) over Iraq’s security policy, never mentioning a US military withdrawal. In terms of the ‘economic sphere’ the two parties agreed upon the principle of “Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments…” Text of the “Declaration of Principles” between Iraq and the United States, issued by the White House on Nov. 26, 2007. http://www.dickatlee.com/etwf/bush_maliki.html; Bill Van Auken, “Bush rejects congressional ban on permanent bases in Iraq.” World Socialist Web Site, 1 February 2008. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/02/iraq-f01.html; Noam Chomsky, “It’s the Oil, Stupid!” info, 23 May 2015. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20080708.htm.

A 2008 US Army-commissioned RAND report outlines a ‘Divide and Rule’ strategy for US engagement in the region, noting that the strategy “focuses on exploiting fault lines between various SJ (Salafi-jihadi) groups to turn them against each other…” The report calls for the US to “capitalize on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes… and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world” while as well maintaining “a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government.” The report confirms that the ‘Divide and Rule’ strategy was already being deployed in Iraq “to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level,” by forming “temporary alliances” with al-Qaeda affiliated “nationalist insurgent groups.” Although they have directly fought against the US for four years and “cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces,” these groups are now being supported to exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.” Christopher G. Pernin et al., “Unfolding the Future of the Long War.” RAND Corporation, 2008. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG738.pdf; Nafeez Ahmed, “Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS.” Insurge Intelligence, 22 May 2015. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092; Early on during the invasion the US covertly supplied arms to al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents while propping up a Shia-dominated government. Pakistani defense sources confirmed to Asia Times that ‘former Ba’ath party’ loyalists were being supplied Pakistani-manufactured weapons by the US. These ‘former Ba’ath party’ loyalists were being recruited and trained by al-Qaeda in Iraq under the leadership of Abu Musab Zarqawi. The arms “could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them”, a source told Asia Times’ Pakistan bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was “known for his exposes of the Pakistani military” according to the New Yorker, and was murdered in 2011. Syed Saleem Shahzad, “US fights back against ‘rule by clerics.’” Asia Times, 15 February, 2005. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html; Nafeez Ahmed, “Caught red-handed.” The Raw Story, 23 September, 2005. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/CAUGHT_RED__0923.html; Nafeez Ahmed, “How the west created the Islamic State.” Insurge Intelligence, 11 September 2014. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state-dbfa6f83bc1f; According to a report for the US Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) and Strategic Studies Department titled “Dividing Our Enemies”, post-invasion Iraq strategy relied upon pursuing public legitimacy through social welfare programs while simultaneously delegitimizing local enemies by escalating intra-insurgent violence, even though this would harm civilians. The report notes that Iraq post-invasion was “an interesting case study of fanning discontent among enemies, leading to ‘red-against-red’ [enemy-against-enemy] firefights,” this strategy however “involves no effort to win over those caught in the crossfire of insurgent and counterinsurgent warfare, whether by bullet or broadcast. On the contrary, this underside of the counterinsurgency coin is calculated to exploit or create divisions among adversaries for the purpose of fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters.” The ‘enemies’ included jihadis, Ba’athists, as well as peaceful Sufis. “Evidence of factional fighting between the residents came to light with nightly gun battles not involving coalition forces. These firefights between insurgent factions represented the impact of U.S. psychological operations (PSYOP), which took advantage of and deepened the intra-insurgent forces. The PSYOP contingent cleverly crafted programs to exploit Zarqawi’s murderous activities and to broadcast them countrywide, thereby diminishing his folk-hero image among Iraqis. Although the jihadis and Baathists shared hostility to the U.S. military forces surrounding Fallujah, their mutual antipathy to each other presented an opportunity to turn them against each other.” Thomas H. Henriksen, “Dividing Our Enemies.” Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), November 2005. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2005/0511_jsou-report-05-5.pdf; Nafeez Ahmed, “How the west created the Islamic State.” Insurge Intelligence, 11 September 2014. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state-dbfa6f83bc1f; US employs the “Salvadorian Option” for Iraq utilizing Shi’ite paramilitaries to lethally quell Sunni uprisings. Michael Hirsh and John Barry, “The Salvador Option.” Newsweek, 9 January 2005. https://web.archive.org/web/20050110030928/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/; Mona Mahmood et al., “Revealed: Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centres.” The Guardian, 6 March 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link; Mona Mahmood, et al., “From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington’s man behind brutal police squads.” The Guardian, 6 March 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington; According to the UK based monitoring group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) Iraq topped the worlds ‘most dangerous’ places list in June of 2015. “Iraq tops ‘most dangerous’ place in world list.” RT, 22 June 2015. http://www.rt.com/uk/268810-top-ten-dangerous-countries/.

Seymour Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” London Review of Books, 17 April 2014. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line; A declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated October of 2012 confirms the existence, as well as the Obama administration awareness of, the ‘rat line,’ “Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.” Judicial Watch, 18 May 2015. https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-1-3-2-3-from-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812/.

Sibel Edmonds breaks the story on the existence of a secret US-NATO base in Turkey, and further explains its operations to organize and expand the dissident base, smuggle in weapons, conduct psychological operations and information warfare, and to funnel intelligence and military operators across the border. Sibel Edmonds, “BFP Exclusive: Syria- Secret US-NATO Training & Support Camp to Oust Current Syrian President.” BoilingFrogsPost, 21 November 2011. http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/21/bfp-exclusive-syria-secret-us-nato-training-support-camp-to-oust-current-syrian-president/; James Corbett interviews former Syrian journalist Nizar Nayouf, previously imprisoned for 10 years for speaking out against the Syrian government, who accounts how hundreds of foreign soldiers were seen moving back and forth near the Jordanian-Syrian border. James Corbett, “BREAKING: US Troops Deploying on Jordan-Syria Border.” CorbettReport, 11 December 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1h1bUfCVc.

“They trained us to ambush regime or enemy vehicles and cut off the road. They also trained us on how to attack a vehicle, raid it, retrieve information or weapons and munitions, and how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.” “Syria: Arming the Rebels.” Frontline, 27 May 2014. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/syria-arming-the-rebels/; The Conventions offer protections to wounded combatants, and prisoners of war must be humanely treated at all times. “Reference Guide to the Geneva Conventions.” Society of Professional Journalists. http://www.spj.org/gc-index.asp#woundedcombatants.

“…the Syrian military opposition is dominated by ISIS and by Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda representative, in addition to other extreme jihadi groups. In reality, there is no dividing wall between them and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.” Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (New York and London: Verso, 2015), pp. 3.

“Thus the monist model is one of integrated nationalism, in which the state is a nationalising one, drawing on the tradition of Ukrainism to fill the existing borders with a content sharply distinguished from Russia. It would be officially monolingual, unitary and culturally specific.” “The core of the problem is an ideological one. At the heart of the monist model… the aim is not to reflect existing realities, above all the different histories of the territories making up contemporary Ukraine, but to restore some idealised vision of that statehood.” “This brings us to the second paradigm of Ukrainian state development, which I call the pluralist to denote its appeal to broad principles of national inclusiveness. At root, this model proposes that the post-Communist Ukrainian state is home to many disparate peoples, reflecting its long history of fragmented statehood and the way that its contemporary borders include territories with very different histories, but that they all share an orientation to a civic Ukrainian identity.” “The pluralist model argues that all the peoples making up contemporary Ukraine have an equal stake in the development of the country, and thus opposes the nationalising strain…” “The monist view is obviously stronger in the western part of the country, while the pluralist approach is stronger in the east and the south.” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 15, 21, 23, 24.

The EU gives Yanukovych an ultimatum to either sign with them or sign with Russia, but rejects a joint deal amidst calls from Yanukovych and Russia for tripartite discussions to resolve the differences. “Ukraine ‘still wants to sign EU deal.’” Al Jazeera, 29 November 2013. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/11/ukraine-still-wants-sign-eu-deal-20131129111345619208.html; “The idea that Russia opposed Ukraine’s association with the EU needs to be modified by an understanding that the struggle prior to the planned signing of the Association Agreement sought to align Ukraine with the EEU [the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union], but not necessarily to force Ukraine to join it. In part, the campaign was an attempt to get the EU to engage in a genuine dialogue about the conditions on which Ukraine would sign up to association with the EU, including security issues. This campaign was conducted in a typically heavy-handed and alienating manner, with bans, boycotts and the like accompanied by some ferocious rhetoric from Sergei Glazyev and others, but some genuine issues were raised. Above all, Russia repeatedly warned that it would take measures to stop poor-quality Ukrainian and relabeled EU goods flooding into the Russian market once better-quality EU goods had free access to Ukraine. The compatibility of two free-trade areas is a matter that should, and could, have been sorted out calmly by technocrats on both sides but instead became politicized.” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 206; For more on this, see my “The Mistaken Analysis on Ukraine.” Reports from Underground, 6 September 2014. http://undergroundreports.blogspot.fr/2014/09/follies-of-western-hubris-mistaken.html.

Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland confirms that the US has invested $5 billion in Ukraine since 1991 to “support the Ukrainians.” “Regime Change in Kiev.” Information Clearing House, 9 February 2014. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm; However, in terms of these ‘democracy promotion’ programs, International Relations scholar John J. Mearsheimer notes that “and when you talk about promoting democracy, what you’re really talking about is putting in power leaders who are pro-Western and anti-Russian… promoting democracy, which was all about putting in power pro-Western leaders.” Mearsheimer quoted in Labor Beat YouTube recording, 26 January 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhILmIvBe6o&feature=youtu.be; “it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did.” John J. Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault; The militancy of the EuroMaidan was led by ultranationalist groups Svoboda and Right Sector. The violence was protected by Obama in his repeated public references to the protests as being wholly “nonviolent”, giving them the green light to continue the violence without fears of reprisals from the West; In 2012 the EU condemned the Svoboda party, whose members gained top ministerial positions and seats on the parliament following the February coup. “European Parliament resolution of 13 December 2012 on the situation in Ukraine,” Section 8. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2012-0507+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN.

Richard Sakwa, Chapter 6 “When History Comes Calling”, “Purging the State”, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 135-140; “Only two ministers from the entire south and east, covering half the country, joined the 21-person cabinet [of the government following the February coup]… No posts were given to PoR [Party of Regions, the party the south and east most predominantly supported]…” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 95; “…but in fact the objective has been to put down and humiliate Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population. The radical nationalists of western Ukraine, for whom the rejection of Russia and its culture is an article of faith, intend to force the rest of the country to fit their narrow vision.” Vladimir Golstein, “Why everything you’ve read about Ukraine is wrong.” Forbes, 19 May 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2014/05/19/why-everything-youve-read-about-ukraine-is-wrong/.

“The storming of government offices in the west of the country in the final months of Yanukovych’s rule was considered something entirely different – part of the revolutionary surge in support of monist nationalism – whereas now the ‘anti-Maidan’ insurgency using the same tactics in support of pluralism was called a terrorist movement.” “The fundamental inability of Kiev and its Western allies to understand that this was not simply an ‘invasion’ but a genuine revolt against a particular type of statehood that had long been unpopular in the south-east, and that the Ukrainian revolution only intensified, meant that they could not recognize the political subjectivity of the rebellion as a force with which there should be dialogue. Instead, labelling the insurgents ‘terrorists’ meant not only that their political identity was negated but also that their very humanity was dismissed, allowing untold cruelties to be inflicted upon the region.” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 151, 181.

In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Headepisode, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.”

Amazingly, Flynn actually took issue with the way interviewer Mehdi Hasan posed the question—Flynn seemed to want to make it clear that the policies that led to the rise of ISIL were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making:

Hasan: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?Flynn: I think the administration.Hasan: So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?Flynn: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.Hasan: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?Flynn: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.

Hasan himself expresses surprise at Flynn’s frankness during this portion of the interview. While holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan reads aloud key passages such as, “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did the State Department soon after its release, Flynn does the opposite: he confirms that while acting DIA chief he “paid very close attention” to this report in particular and later adds that “the intelligence was very clear.”

Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on the Syrian regime:

Hasan: In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?

Flynn: I hate to say it’s not my job…but that…my job was to…was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be.

The early reporting that treated the DIA memo as newsworthy and hugely revelatory was criticized and even mocked by some experts, as well as outlets like The Daily Beast. Yet the very DIA director at the time the memo was drafted and circulated widely now unambiguously confirms the document to be of high value, and indicates that it served as source material in his own discussions over Syria policy with the White House.

As Michael Flynn also previously served as director of intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda, his honest admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature.

Consider further the dissonance that comes with viewing the Pentagon’s former highest ranking intelligence officer in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden now calmly and coolly confessing that the United States directly aided the foot soldiers of Ayman al-Zawahiri beginning in at least 2012 in Syria.

This confirmation is significant to my own coverage of the DIA report, as I was contacted by a number of individuals who attempted to assure me that the true experts and “insiders” knew the document was unimportant and therefore irrelevant within the intelligence community and broader Syria policy.

This began after a Daily Beast article entitled The ISIS Conspiracy That Ate the Web cited former NSA officer John Schindler as an expert source. Schindler concluded of the DIA document: “it’s difficult to say much meaningful about it… Nothing special here, not one bit.”

To my surprise, only hours after I published a rebuttal of Schindler and the Daily Beast article, I was contacted by a current high level CIA official who is also a personal friend from my time living in the D.C. area.

This official, who spent most of his career with CIA Public Affairs, made a personal appeal urging me to drop my comments attacking John Schindler’s credibility, as I had noted that Schindler is a highly ideological and scandal-laden commentator who consistently claims special insider knowledge in support of his arguments. This CIA official further attempted to convince me of Schindler’s credibility as an insider and expert, assuring me that “he has written insightfully.”

Mehdi Hasan’s historic interview with General Flynn should put the issue to rest—the declassified DIA report is now confirmed to be a central and vital source that sheds light on the origins of ISIS, and must inform a candid national debate on American policy in Syria and Iraq.

As it is now already becoming part of the official record on conflict in Syria among respected international historians, knowledge of the declassified document must make it into every American household.

MY INITIAL REPORTING on the DIA memo that in 2012 predicts that the West would fuel the rise of “an Islamic State” in Syria caused enough of a global media stir that it prompted DIA Public Affairs to respond to my questions.

But as Middle East Eye reported, the DIA’s response was disappointing yet still somewhat revealing:

When asked repeatedly by journalist and ex-US marine Brad Hoff to dispel claims that the West aligned itself with IS or ISIS at some point in Syria, the DIA’s official response was telling: “No comment.”

While major foreign media like The Guardian, The Sunday Times of London, Der Spiegel, RT News, UK Daily Mail, and London Review of Books ran stories and prominent editorials that featured serious discussion of the document, their mainstream media equivalents in the U.S. didn’t touch it. To my knowledge, outlets like CNN, FOX, NBC, Newsweek, NPR, Washington Post, etc… have yet to even quote from the specific document either through broadcast or even in online articles.

Perhaps it will take hearing from the chief of the DIA that was in place at the time the intelligence report was drafted to finally inform the broader American public?

Thankfully, this will happen in a forthcoming Al Jazeera English interview with retired US Lt. General Michael Flynn, former head of the Pentagon’s DIA and senior intelligence officer with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Al Jazeera’s press release announcing the interview entitled “Is the US to blame for ISIL?” indicates that Flynn is asked specifically about the document in the prerecorded show set to air July 31:

Publicly commenting for the first time on a previously-classified August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo, which had predicted “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (…) this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want” and confirmed that “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the former DIA chief told Head to Head that “the [Obama] Administration” didn’t “listen” to these warnings issued by his agency’s analysts.

“I don’t know if they turned a blind eye,” he said. “I think it was a decision, I think it was a willful decision.”

“Is the US to blame for ISIL?”with Michael Flynn will be broadcast on Friday 31st July at 20.00 GMT and will be repeated on Saturday 1st August at 12.00 GMT, Saturday 2nd August at 01.00 GMT and Monday 3rd August at 06.00 GMT.

For continuing coverage of the DIA Islamic State document, follow Taylor Tyler’s excellent reporting at Headline and Global News.

Steven Chovanec is an independent geopolitical analyst and writer based in Chicago, IL. He is a student of International Studies and Sociology at Roosevelt University and conducts independent, open-source research into geopolitics and social issues. His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com, find him on Twitter @stevechovanec. (Above Image: Shutterstock)

by Steven Chovanec

THE FACT THAT THE US can find only 60 Syrian rebels to train is quite telling.

It means that out of nearly 18 million Syrians (reduced by 4 million since the start of the conflict) the US could only find 60 that were willing to fight against the Syrian Army, only 60.(1)

In other words, only an increase of ~0.000333% of the Syrian population is deemed “moderate” by the US and willing to fight. The military is currently in the process of vetting 7,000 volunteers, so if we assume that all of them will pass inspection, that will amount to a mere ~0.039222% of the population. A far cry from 0.1%, let alone 1% of the total inhabitants.

The fact that only 60 can be deemed “moderate” is also quite telling. This coming from a government who deemed the Free Syrian Army, among others, as “moderates.”

Anti-tank missiles for “moderate” rebels—now in ISIS and AQ hands.

In September of 2014, FSA “moderate” commander and recipient of US aid Bassel Idriss admitted that “We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front,” the reason for this being “We have reached a point where we have to collaborate with anyone against unfairness and injustice.”(2)

Back in April of the same year, the leader of the US-backed “moderate” Syrian Revolutionary Front Jamal Maarouf admitted that al-Qaeda was “not our problem” and that his fighters conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. “If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They [Jabhat al-Nusra] asked us a month ago to send weapons to Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there. When they asked us to do this, we do it.”(3)

One of the most senior “moderate” rebel commanders to be backed by the US and main recipient of Western aid, Col. Okaidi, is seen in a video, which has been authenticated by Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma, speaking during interviews saying “My relationship with the brothers in ISIL is good… I communicate almost daily with brothers in ISIL… the relationship is good, even brotherly.”

Okaidi admits al-Qaeda is not any different from the FSA “They [al-Nusra] did not exhibit any abnormal behavior, which is different from that of the FSA.” The video shows Okaidi with ISIS Emir Abu Jandal (right frame below: standing right of Okaidi) celebrating a victory, an ally ISIS fighter shouts “I swear to Allah, O Alawites, we came to slaughter you. Await what you deserve!”(4)

US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford (left frame above, standing by FSA Col. Okaidi), who worked closely with Okaidi, himself admitted to giving material support to ISIS and al-Nusra, stating that he “absolutely does not deny” knowing that most of the rebels he backed fought alongside ISIS and Nusra.(5)

The reason for all of this is simply that, as pointed out by the leading Western journalist in the region, Patrick Cockburn, “In reality, there is no dividing wall between them [ISIS and Nusra] and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.” According to Vice President Biden, “there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.”(6)

This means that apart from a plethora of substantially foreign terrorist jihadi lunatics, there is no other force willing to fight against the government.

2014 photo posted on ISIS media account: experts say the weapon is a Croatian RBG-6 grenade launcher, a weapon supplied to the Syrian rebels through the Saudi and CIA effort to transfer Balkan weapons to Syrian jihadists.

The reasons for this were further articulated by Obama himself, who stated that it was a “fantasy” to think that the US could arm and equip “farmers, dentists, and folks who never fought before” and have them be an effective force against Assad.(7) What is implied here is that ordinary Syrians, actually moderate individuals, have no desire for military action nor are they capable of effectively harnessing it, hence the need to support the extremists, who are. And therefore, as Biden points out, the Wests’ allies “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons to… al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” What Biden leaves out is that this was all coordinated under a covert US-led operation.

In reality, these moderates were the peaceful opposition that did not want the destruction of the state but instead desired democratic change, who were then displaced by foreign-backers and terrorist who hijacked their uprising, as is conceded by prominent opposition leaders.(8)

This hijacking was the result of US leaders realizing that the actual moderates only wanted peaceful change, while the West desired the overthrow of the state through any means necessary, including violent takeover, and so therefore “Jihadi groups ideologically close to al-Qaeda have been relabeled as moderate if their actions are deemed supportive of US policy aims,” as Patrick Cockburn rightly points out. The result of this is that “Washington thus allowed advanced weaponry to be handed to its deadliest enemy.”(9)

The recent training of 60 “moderates” is nothing different.

To illustrate this, it’s important to see that this narrative of a moderate opposition stays constant, while the group this label is applied to constantly changes.

Right now this label is being applied to the Southern Front, hailed as the new moderate force America can morally support. However, this group is financed and supported by the Military Operations Centre (MOC) in Amman that is staffed by agents from the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, as well as other anti-Assad governments, and according to Syrian expert Aron Lund, “adoption of MOC-provided talking points” of moderation by members of this alliance are likely “to be more opportunistic than heartfelt.”(10)

The reason the US is now training 60 rebels is because every single other rebel group that the US trained, equipped, funded, and marked as “moderate” has gone on to join either al-Qaeda or ISIS. FSA brigades, the Syrian Revolutionary Front, Harakat Hazm, all of them have now defected to al-Qaeda and ISIS.(11)

Image: Moderate Rebels Mock a Christian Soldier—This photo was originally posted online by a Swedish based terror group in Syria after the Summer 2013 rebel offensive against a govt. airbase near Aleppo. A rebel fighter mocks a captured Christian government soldier’s cross. Another photo posted in the original set reveals that the soldier was later tortured by being crushed with a large rock on his chest as he lay on his back.

At every point along the way while receiving US-aid they were branded as “moderates.” After they went on to join ISIS or it became too hard to keep up their “moderate” image, the torch was passed on to a new group, as now it is passed onto the Southern Front, yet “in reality” there was never any “moderate middle” nor is there “a dividing wall between [the extremists] and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.”

Therefore we should not be fooled when new rebels “ideologically close to al-Qaeda” are “relabeled as moderate” all because “their actions are deemed supportive of US policy aims”, whether they be the Southern Front, the new 60-trainees, or the next group that is sure to emerge in the future, especially given that from the beginning, according to US intelligence, the opposition has taken “a clear sectarian direction”, and according to leading Western journalists has been dominated from the start by “ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra… in addition to other extreme jihadi groups.”(12)

There is nothing moderate about voluntarily taking up arms and agreeing to be a proxy force for foreign powers. Furthermore, there is nothing moderate about attacking and overtaking towns and villages, which is the expressed aim of this new US-backed force, when the majority of the population isn’t calling for it and doesn’t desire it. As Zbigniew Brzezinski has stated, Assad has more support than any group opposing him, and surely he has more support than a US-backed militia, as polls consistently show world opinion sees the US as the major threat to peace, and since most Syrians are aware of the dirty war being perpetrated on them by the West.(13)

UK-based Conflict Armament Research investigators found this expended ammunition at ISIS firing positions in northern Iraq. The bullets were manufactured at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri. (Source: Conflict Armament Research)

The presence of ISIS is not an argument for the training of more rebels, it is instead an argument against this, as quite possibly the single biggest factor in the creation and rise of ISIS was the US sponsoring of the insurgency in Syria which they knew to be sectarian and extremist, coupled with the training of rebels who were either themselves extremist terrorist or affiliated with such parties, flooding them with arms and funds to the tune of $1 billion per year and $2.91 billion since 2014.(14)

It must be remembered what former Scotland Yard detective and UK counterterrorism intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge rightly pointed out, that “the ‘moderate’ rebels the US and UK support themselves openly welcomed the arrival of such extremists. Indeed, the Free Syria Army backed by the West was allied with ISIS, until ISIS attacked them at the end of 2013.”(15)

For the first 3 years of the crisis the rebels the West openly backed were allies of ISIS, committing the exact same kind of atrocities and terroristic acts. And according to Patrick Cockburn, the US-backed FSA were at times despised even more than the other terrorist organizations as they would terrorize and ransack the civilian populations, “Pilloried in the West for their sectarian ferocity, these jihadists were often welcomed by local people for restoring law and order after the looting and banditry of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.”(16)

If you train rebels one time and they commit these atrocities and fight alongside fanatical terrorists you can at least plead ignorance and good intentions, however if you continue these actions when this has been the outcome every single time, let alone doing it over, and over, and over, and over again, then that is premeditated complicity in the sponsoring of terrorism, an act by the West that Syria’s Christian leaders are also demanding an end to.(17)

This recent attempt to train “moderate” rebels is no different. There is nothing moderate about the entire process, and these fighters will go on to commit the exact same kinds of atrocities and ally with the exact same terrorist entities that all of our other rebels have done in the past.

Furthermore, just the mere action of pumping in more bullets, guns, weaponry, and fighters will inevitably lead to further bloodshed and civilian casualties caught within the crossfire, exacerbating the situation and increasing pain and suffering. As Charles Shoebridge notes, the notion that “pouring sophisticated weaponry into a war zone already awash with weapons” will somehow “save civilian lives” is a deeply “flawed assumption.” “Syria’s rebels must be assessed as they are, not as they once were, or as we’d romantically like them to be,” and therefore on that basis, noting the extensively documented history of rebel atrocities, “we should not be backing them.”(18)

In his book “The Rise of Islamic State” Patrick Cockburn writes, “An intelligence officer from a Middle Eastern country neighboring Syria told me that ISIS members “say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups of any kind, because they can always get the arms off them by threats of force or cash payments.”” (19) (emphasis mine)

I think it’s about time we stop fueling the spilling of blood and the arming of terrorists inside Syria. If we actually wanted to stop ISIS, that’s the first place we would start.

5.) “In February 2015, he [Robert Ford] openly confessed to having given support to ISIS and Al-Nusra terrorists after being questioned by Al-Monitor News journalist Edward Dark. THE TWITTER HANDLE, @fordrs58 is indeed Ambassador Robert Ford’s account, as was confirmed to me in a personal email by Dr. Joshua Landis, Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the most well-known Syria scholar in the United States.” Hoff, Brad. Levant Report, May 25th, 2015. https://levantreport.com/tag/robert-ford/.

8.) In the beginning of the uprisings, Syrians did not desire the destruction of the pluralistic and socially inclusive albeit authoritarian state given the popular support for the president and the country’s religious diversity and tolerance. They supported the country’s protection of minorities, as well as the status of women and free education and health care yet opposed corruption, the security-intelligence apparatus, and the feared political police. Wikstrom, Cajsa. “Syria: ‘A kingdom of silence’”. Al Jazeera, February 9th, 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/201129103121562395.html; Muhanna, Elias. “No Revolution in Syria: An Interview with Camille Otrakji.” http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/otrakji030511.html; Otrakji, Camille. “The Real Bashar Al-Assad.”Conflict Forum, February 4th, 2012. http://www.conflictsforum.org/2012/the-real-bashar-al-assad/; For further on this, see Tim Anderson, “Washington’s ‘New Middle East’ Stalls, the Resistance Rises.” Global Research, July 12th, 2015. http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-new-middle-east-stalls-the-resistance-rises/5462101; The fact that the peaceful protests were hijacked and displaced by foreign-backed extremists is also explored in Andersons piece, as well as being conceded by leading opposition figures like Dr. Haytham Manna, who states that “the pumping of arms to Syria, supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the phenomenon of the Free Syrian Army, and the entry of more than 200 jihadi foreigners into Syria in the past six months have all led to a decline in the mobilisation of large segments of the population… and in the activists’ peaceful civil movement. The political discourse has become sectarian; there has been a Salafisation of religiously conservative sectors”, Haytham Manna, The Guardian, “Syria’s opposition has been led astray by violence.” June 22, 2012.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/22/syria-opposition-led-astray-by-violence; This point is as well articulated by leading Western journalists. According to Patrick Cockburn “Come the uprisings of 2011, it was the jihadi and Sunni-sectarian, militarized wing of rebel movements that received massive injections of money from the kings and emirs of the Gulf. The secular, non-sectarian opponents of the long-established police states were soon marginalized, reduced to silence, or killed.” As well, “Saudi involvement, along with that of Qatar and Turkey, de-emphasized secular democratic change as the ideology of the uprising, which then turned into a Sunni bid for power using Salafi jihadist brigades as the cutting edge of the revolt.” Cockburn, Patrick. “The Rise of ISIS” & “Saudi Arabia Tries to Pull Back.” The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 8, 103-4. Print; What Cockburn leaves out in these passages is that this was all coordinated under a covert US/CIA operation out of US-led operation rooms in Turkey and Jordan, where the US was giving intelligence to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar on which rebels to support, which ended up going “largely to hard-line Islamists.” Schmitt, Eric. New York Times, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition.” June 21, 2015.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=0; Sanger, David E. New York Times, “Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria.” October 14, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/jihadists-receiving-most-arms-sent-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&.

11.) Zaman Alwasl, “FSA brigades pledge allegiance to ISIS in Al Bukamal, east Syria.” July 7th, 2014. https://en.zamanalwsl.net/readNews.php?id=5696; In September 2014 Abu Fidaa, a retired Colonel in the Syrian army who headed the Revolutionary Council in Qalamoun stated that “A very large number of FSA members [in Arsal] have joined ISIS and Nusra,” while FSA Commander Bassel Idriss said that “After the fall of Yabroud and the FSA’s retreat into the hills [around Arsal], many units pledged allegiance.” Knutsen, Elise. “Frustration drives Arsal’s FSA into ISIS ranks.” The Daily Star, September 8, 2014.http://cached.newslookup.com/cached.php?ref_id=394&siteid=2319&id=8144452&t=1410149280; Fadel, Leith. “3,000 FSA Fighters Defect to ISIS in the Qalamoun Mountains.” The Arab Source, January 9th, 2015. http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/3000-fsa-fighters-defect-isis-qalamoun-mountains/; “Moderate rebels who had been armed and trained by the United States either surrendered or defected to the extremists as the Jabhat al-Nusra group, affiliated with al-Qaeda… Among the groups whose bases were overrun in the assault was Harakat Hazm, the biggest recipient of U.S. assistance offered under a small-scale, covert CIA program launched this year, including the first deliveries of U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles… rebel fighters there surrendered their weapons and fled without a fight.” Sly, Liz. “U.S.-backed Syria rebels routed by fighters linked to al-Qaeda.” The Washington Post, November 2nd, 2014.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-backed-syria-rebels-routed-by-fighters-linked-to-al-qaeda/2014/11/02/7a8b1351-8fb7-4f7e-a477-66ec0a0aaf34_story.html; “The Syrian rebel group Harakat al-Hazm, one of the White House’s most trusted militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad, collapsed Sunday, with activists posting a statement online from frontline commanders saying they are disbanding their units and folding them into brigades aligned with a larger Islamist insurgent alliance.” Dettmer, Jamie. “Main U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebel Group Disbanding, Joining Islamists.” The Daily Beast, March 1st, 2015. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/01/main-u-s-backed-syrian-rebel-group-disbanding-joining-islamists.html; “Islamic fighters with Jabhat al-Nusra… routed US-backed groups the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SFR) and Harakat Hazm… [Washington] has thus been supplying them with heavy weapons, including TOW anti-tank missiles… ‘Some of the rebels swore allegiance to al-Nusra, others fled.’” Bacchi, Umberto. “Syria: Al-Nusra Jihadists ‘Capture US TOW Anti-Tank Missiles’ from Moderate Rebels.” International Business Times, November 3rd, 2014. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/syria-al-nusra-jihadists-capture-us-weaponry-moderate-rebels-1472864; “Fighters under the Obama-backed SRF commander Jamal Maarouf… have apparently been joining al-Qaeda in droves. “Dozens of his fighters defected and joined Nusra, that is why the group won,” Rami Abdulrahman with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was quoted as saying by Reuters. Nusra fighters also confirmed the defections of U.S.-equipped fighters to al-Qaeda. According to sources on the ground cited in media reports, Nusra obtained tanks and other heavy weapons as large numbers of SRF fighters swore allegiance to al-Qaeda.” Newman, Alex. ““Moderate” Rebels Armed by Obama Join al-Qaeda, ISIS.” New American, November 21, 2014. http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/19583-moderate-rebels-armed-by-obama-join-al-qaeda-isis; “Abu Majid, another rebel leader, who has been receiving western support for six months, said it had not prevented his recent defeat by Jabhat al-Nusra… More than 1,000 men, half his brigade’s strength, had left in despair, many defecting to Isil… Defection to the jihadists has now been going on for years. Mahmoud, a former prisoner of the regime who used to work for the FSA, now runs safe houses in Turkey for foreign fighters looking to join Jabhat al-Nusra and Isil.” Sherlock, Ruth. “Fears that US weapons will fall into al-Qaeda’s hands as Syrian rebels defect.” The Telegraph, November 11th, 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11224488/Fears-that-US-weapons-will-fall-into-al-Qaedas-hands-as-Syrian-rebels-defect.html.

13.) USA Today reports Defense Secretary Carter explaining that the 60 rebel fighters primary mission will be “to protect their towns and villages from ISIL fighters.” The word “protect” here is a euphemism for “control”, as these rebel groups “protect” villages by taking them over, thus insuring that others, like ISIL, do not. Vanden Brook, Tom, “Pentagon pays Syrians $400 per month to fight ISIL.” USA Today, June 22nd, 2015. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/06/22/pentagon-syria-isis/29113251/; The problem with this kind of “protection” is that the Syrians aren’t calling for it, and don’t desire it, especially from a US-proxy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has stated “whether we like it or not, Assad does have some significant support in Syrian society. And probably more than any one of the several groups that are opposing him… he has a better standing than any one of them.” “Brzezinski: Assad has more support than any group opposing him,” C-SPAN, January 26th, 2015. http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4525103/brzezinski-assad-support-group-opposing; Polls consistently show that, according to world opinion, the US is the greatest threat to world peace. Gallup International’s annual global End of Year survey 2013, Gallup International. http://www.wingia.com/web/files/services/33/file/33.pdf?1437015589.